Rugby

Bloemfontein – The Springboks, desperate for a win over the Wallabies in Bloemfontein on Saturday, will take huge comfort in the fact that they have scrumhalf Ross Cronjeback in action.

The 28-year-old is still green when it comes to Test rugby – he has just four international caps to his name having suffered two injuries and an illness in 2017 – but he offers a stability that the Boks have lacked when he has been on the sidelines.

Francois Hougaard had been given the scrumhalf responsibilities in Cronje’s absence, but coach Allister Coetzee eventually lost patience with the former Bulls man after another disappointing showing against the All Blacks two weekends ago.

With Hougaard dumped, Rudy Paige is set to stay on as second-choice as Cronje returns.

It is a major positive for Coetzee and the Boks ahead of a match that they simply must win. Any hopes of a first Rugby Championship title since 2009 are well and truly extinguished, but the Boks must make a statement this weekend to suggest that they have recovered from that 57-0 hammering in Albany.

What Coetzee has in Cronje is a scrumhalf who does the basics well and, most importantly, gets quality ball away quickly.

It was here, in particular, where Hougaard struggled as his two steps before passing gave the All Black defensive line time to squeeze the Bok attack.

Elton Jantjies is a flyhalf that thrives when has that extra split-second, and Cronje gives him that.

The Boks have struggled at scrumhalf ever since the end of the 2015 World Cup when Fourie du Preez bowed out of the game, but in Cronje they seemingly have a player who can take them to 2019.

It is a large responsibility for a man who has represented his country just four times, but Cronje appears level-headed enough to take it in his stride.

Cape Town – Springbok coach Allister Coetzee is flirting increasingly with peril right across the physically-demanding front row in his Test side.

By giving his most common substitutes in the three berths –Steven Kitshoff (loosehead prop), Bongi Mbonambi(hooker) and Trevor Nyakane (tighthead/utility) – pretty restricted game-time throughout the Rugby Championshipand also before it, the risk only swells that they will be under-cooked to varying degrees if suddenly summoned to the heat of combat early in a Test.

Here’s a statistic that says so much: between the three players already mentioned, there are a deceptively healthy-looking 60 appearances in the national jersey.

But guess how many, of all those caps, are starts? The answer is a flimsy two.

Both of those belong to the versatile Nyakane (now 32 total appearances), though neither has yet come under Coetzee’s charge … they were when Heyneke Meyer was head coach, and in respective victories over Italy (Padova, 2014) and Argentina (Buenos Aires, 2015).

Since then, Nyakane has gone on as a sub nine times while the incumbent has been calling the player-swap shots.

But at least the burly Bulls man knows what it is like to begin a Test match: Kitshoff, next to him on the “splinters” so often, currently sports 17 caps and, despite often enough making a rousing impact at some point in the second half of games, very patiently awaits that first summoning to the actual No 1 shirt for the Boks.

Admittedly in recent times, the veteran Tendai Mtawarira has lifted his game sufficiently to make it difficult for Coetzee to sit him out for a change as the loose-head starter and present considerably younger, 25-year-old Kitshoff with a crack at the outset.

But by sticking so rigidly to the status quo where Kitshoff gets around half an hour of activity, sometimes at best, it makes it challenging for the player to have to muster the required stamina in a hurry if injury woe, for example, were to strike “Beast” soon after a Test kick-off.

Even more at risk when it comes to possession of 80-minute lungs and legs in an emergency, if you like, is someone like the deputy hooker to Malcolm Marx, Mbonambi.

For the Stormers/WP player (11 caps, all off the bench) even the last full quarter of a game is something of a luxury, so he would really have to dig deep if pressed into action unusually early in an international right now.

It is possible that Nyakane, based on a poor 25 minutes during the collectively grim 0-57 fiasco against the All Blacks in Albany, will not even make the bench against Australia in Bloemfontein on Saturday; there is a strong case for extremely specialist No 3 Wilco Louw, fresh out of impressive Currie Cup duty for WP, to win a first cap (perhaps most likely as a sub, with Ruan Dreyer still the starting anchor).

But if he does dodge a match-day squad culling, Nyakane remains an especially vulnerable character if asked to play the lion’s share of a Test, because even at Super Rugby level he is often a reserve, or worryingly seldom given the luxury of playing a full game even when handed a No 1 or 3 jersey rather than 17 or 18.

His conditioning looks much better than it was several months ago, which is some comfort, but it is still asking a lot for him to go hammer and tongs for, say, 75 minutes at short notice; that is simply such a rare phenomenon in his case, even when operating a notch or two down from Test rugby.

At some stage – even with his tenure under renewed scrutiny and the engine room among his lesser hassles, perhaps – Coetzee would be well advised to give his broad front-row resources a more even spread of the hard yakka, don’t you think?

Cape Town – All Blacks lock Luke Romano has explained what he believes makes the world champions such a formidable side when playing at home.

“Obviously there is that history (of success) there at home but whether it’s us or whether it’s (that) the other teams that come to New Zealand are already beaten before they come there; that the other teams think like that, think that they’re not going to win,” Romano told the Stuff.co.nz

“So even before they’ve got on their plane, they’ve beaten themselves. And that’s going back to your question about the mindset; rugby, a lot of it is about the top two inches

“A lot of the athletes around the world are pretty similar, they’ve all got the same attributes and can all do the same things, but it just comes down to that mental attitude and that mindset.

“You just take the Lions. The Lions come over real confident and they beat us and had a draw with us.”

The Pumas will be keen to go from being competitive for 60 minutes, to actually playing as well for the full 80 and beat the All Blacks when the sides meet in their Rugby Championship clash in Buenos Aires on Saturday.